Lights Out
by TurboloverJP
Summary: Helena faces a tough subject


Disclaimer - I don't own the characters of Birds of Prey. No copyright infringement is intended.

**LIGHTS OUT**

****

I've had a weird feeling all day. 

I can't explain it, it's just...well...weird.

As I look out at the night sky from up here on top of the Granite Building tower, I feel an odd, cooling sensation - a chill. I know I'm way up here and there's a slight wind in the air, but it's different. The chill feels like it's looming. Like I said, weird.

It's almost 1am and I figure I better make a final sweep from the rooftops below before heading home.

I make it over to an apartment building over on 8th because it gives me a good view of the trouble spots. It's a rough area, something I've come to find out the hard way.

There's a couple of guys hanging around the corner and I know they're up to no good, I can feel it.

Sure enough, one of them just pulled out a knife. Damn, and I thought I was going home on time tonight.

I jump onto the ledge of the building on the alley side. This way I can sneak up on them.

I hop over the ledge and make my descent but rather than sailing towards the sidewalk I find myself upside down, my head and left shoulder smashing into the brick of the building I just leapt from.

I hit pretty hard, hard enough to draw blood and shake the cobwebs from my skull.

Looking up, it looks like the hem of my coat got caught on a rusty piece of rebar.

"Great."

I move my body backwards to gain enough momentum to be able to swing myself over towards the iron bars that line one of the tenant's deck.

RRRrrrrrrip!!!

Before I can think, before I can even react, my coat rips from the rebar and I sail towards the ground below.

Everything is wrong - I'm not facing the right way, I wasn't ready for the plunge...I'm not prepared. In fact, I'm fucked.

BLAM!!!

All I feel is the air being knocked from my lungs and tremendous pressure all over my body due to the impact.

I open my eyes slowly and realize I haven't fallen on the sidewalk, I've fallen onto the roof of a car.

I can't move, it hurts too much.

I can't breathe, it hurts too much.

I can feel blood leaking out of my body from all sorts of places and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

All I can think about is sleeping, and that's when I feel it...that chill.

Suddenly, the pain intensifies and my eyes close.

***

I feel like I'm being dragged.

When I open my eyes I can see that I am. Someone dressed in black is dragging me by the ankle.

Everything around me is dark so I can't tell where I am.

The next thing I know, he stops and flings me out into the darkness. I crash into a wall of some sort and slump down to the ground.

Looking up at him, all I see is a man dressed in black along with a black cape and hood. Not one ounce of flesh is showing. He's just standing there staring at me.

"Who the hell are you?" I ask.

He doesn't answer me, just laughs and squats down in front of me.

I kick out towards him and successfully knock him over on his ass. "Get the fuck away from me!"

As soon as I'm on my feet, I find myself off them again when a sudden blast of energy hits me and knocks me to the ground, flat on my back.

"Don't fuck with me," he snarls in a low voice.

When he leans in closer to me I realize he doesn't have a face, just a black void inside his hood.

Just as I'm about to make a snide comment, I stop myself because it dawns on me who the man is....death.

"Behave yourself, little girl and things will move alot quicker. Now, we've got an appointment that we're already late for."

He grabbed me by the shoulder and began dragging me again. To be honest, I was afraid to fight him off because I feared the unknown. I just let him do it.

It wasn't long until we reached an area that had cages lined up and down a long hallway, most of which were empty.

He opened one of them and tossed me inside, locking it before I could attempt to get out.

"What am I doing here?"

"Sit down and shut up until your destination is determined."

He walked away and I could feel the chill that I'd felt earlier in the day. 

I sank to the ground, hugging my knees. He'd been watching me all day, waiting for the right moment to strike.

"Hey!" a voice called out to me from the cage beside me.

I turned and saw an old man sitting on the floor in his cage.

"How'd you get in here?" he asked me.

"I...." I thought back to what had happened and remember lying on the roof of that car, "I fell." Upon saying the words, I checked myself over for injuries.

The old man saw what I was doing. "They go away here because it doesn't matter anymore."

I couldn't find anything. No broken bones. No blood. Nothing.

"I got stabbed. My own son killed me." He turned to show me his chest. "Stabbed me right in the heart."

His chest didn't show any signs of a stabbing. This was pretty fucked up.

I swallowed hard as I thought about Barbara, Dinah, Alfred...Reese. Then I started to cry. "I can't be here," I mumbled.

"It's okay," the man said.

"Fuck you! It isn't okay! I'm not supposed to die, not now! Not this way! I didn't do anything!"

"You said you fell so you DID do something, you fell." He giggled at his own words which tore through me like red-hot pokers.

My tears stopped and I felt anger boiling up inside me. I stood up with my fists clenched by my sides. "Don't talk to me. Mind your own fuckin' business. You don't know a damn thing about me."

"Excuuuuuuse me," he said rudely. "No need to be such a bitch. Maybe THAT'S why you got here. Huh?"

I walked over to the door and put my hands on the bars. I tried a few times to push the door open, even tried kicking the door open. No luck.

The man next door laughed at my feeble attempt at an escape.

"If you don't shut up right now I'm..."

"What? Gonna kill me?" He laughed some more, this time louder. "It's a little late for that, sweet thing."

I did my best to let his words roll right off me.

I turned my back to him and sat back down.

Putting my head in my hands, I thought about all the times I pissed Barbara off, and all the times I'd ever lied to her. 

Then I thought about Dinah. I've never really accepted having her around. I think it's partly due to jealousy. This is my turf...or at least it was.

Reese. There's a complicated situation, but that may be my fault. I don't let people get too close to me, not even him. Now I regret it.

All these "if only's" going around in my head, it's driving me crazy. I slam my fists on the ground in a rage just as he comes back to unlock my cage door.

"Still in a pissed off mood I see."

"I'm not ready for this," I said as I stayed where I was.

"I don't give a shit whether you're ready or not, you're coming with me."

I stood up and faced him. "I'm not going anywhere with you!"

"We can do this the hard way, it doesn't matter to me." He grabbed my jacket and I batted his arms away. A swift kick to his shins stunned him for a moment and I took the opportunity to smash my fist on his back to get him down to the ground.

I ran past him and shut the door to the cage, locking it and locking him inside. "Told you I wasn't ready." I shoved the keys in my pocket and watched as he got up.

"Get back here!"

"Way to go, sweet thing," the old man said as I walked past his cage.

"Rot in hell," I told him with raw honesty.

I began running back in the direction we'd come in when he first brought me in. It kept getting darker and darker, making it impossible to see where I was going and to know if I was going in the right direction.

I kept on running but stopped when I felt that cool sensation. In the blink of an eye, something slammed into me and drove me to the ground. I grunted from the impact and knew right away it was him, I could smell him. Rotting, stinking death.

He punched me a few times and I returned the favor but it was useless. He didn't tire and wouldn't let up.

I went at him with everything I had and managed to wrap my legs around his neck, hearing a sickening crack echo throughout the area we were in. I felt his body go limp and I let go in order to get away from him. I heard him hit the ground, but I took off as quickly as I could.

It felt like I was running forever, but I had to keep going.

It started getting lighter and I could see where I was going now.

"Hey!" a low voice called out from behind me.

I turned around and saw a sickle coming towards me.

SLAM!!!

It jammed itself into my left shoulder but I didn't feel anything. With a hard pull, I tore it from my shoulder and threw it back at him before running again.

I ran as fast as my legs would take me and then I felt a sudden blast of pain just as the light got extremely bright.

I found myself gasping for breath and sitting upright.

"Helena?!?" Barbara called out.

The shock of hearing her voice startled me and zapped the air back into my lungs.

Panting, I turned to my side and saw Barbara sitting beside me, panic etched all over her face. "Lie back down," she told me as she put her hands on me.

I did as I was told, which was a first. "Where am I?" I gasped.

Barbara was poking me with all sorts of needles and taping all kinds of monitors to me. "Shhh, lie still, try and calm down."

"Helena!" Dinah yelled as she hurried into the room. "Is she alright?"

"We'll know in a minute."

"What the fuck is going on?" I demanded through gritted teeth. The pain was intense and it surprised me because it rapidly came on out of nowhere.

"We found you on the roof of a car, you fell," Dinah said as she helped Barbara set up the machines by my bed.

"I...I was dead." 

The room got quiet quick and both of them looked at me.

Barbara was holding back tears and doing her damnedest to concentrate. "Yes, you were."

I didn't say anything after that. Enough had been said already.

"I'm giving you a light dose of painkillers. I want to make sure your brain functions are stable and undamaged before I up the dosage. You're going to be in alot of pain for a while. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I mumbled softly.

"Dinah, can you leave us alone for a few minutes?"

"Sure."

After Dinah left I could see Barbara begin to break down. Honestly, it scared me because it must have been pretty bad.

I reached out my hand and touched Barbara's. Big mistake. It's opened up the flood gate of tears.

"I wish I could yell at you or something but I can't," she sobbed, "I know it was only an accident. One of the tenants from the apartment building said he saw you fall. He helped me get you in the car."

"I..."

"I knew something was wrong the moment I saw you lying there."

I didn't know how bad I was hurt, just knew that I hurt like hell.

"How'd you find me?"

"I hadn't heard you report in so I was tracking you to be on the safe side, I know how you are. When I saw that red light move a little ways and then not move at all I knew in the pit of my stomach that something was wrong. I tried contacting you and there..." Barbara sobbed some more, "there was no answer."

Barbara wiped her tears away with her sleeve as she checked the results of my brain scan.

I didn't even try to make any jokes, this wasn't the time.

I could see relief wash over her face as she sighed. "The results came back normal, no brain damage."

She reached up to turn up the morphine and I stopped her. "No. Leave it. I don't want to sleep."

"But you'll be in pain."

"I don't care. I don't want to go to sleep just yet. Not after..."

Barbara nodded and straightened out the sheets with her hand.

"So how bad is it?"

"Well, you took a nasty smack to the head leaving you with one hell of a gash by your eyebrow. You dislocated your left shoulder, broke two ribs and collapsed a lung. I was trying to get your lung re-inflated when you woke up."

I closed my eyes for a moment as I flashed back to roof of that car.

"You okay?" 

"I don't know," I said. "How is someone supposed to be after they see death?"

Barbara didn't answer because I don't think she had one.

"I saw him. I felt him. I smelled him. Hell, I fought him. How ballsy is that?" I chuckled then winced. "I felt him all around me but I didn't know that that's what it was." A single tear rolled down my cheek. "I'm not ready to die."

"No, you're not," Barbara agreed.

"I fought like hell to come back here," I said just as a rush of pain ran through my system. 

"I know. Your vitals were all over the place."

I smiled through the pain at the thought of Barbara knowing how much of a fight I put up.

"You're safe now, Helena. I'll be right here," Barbara said as she reached up towards my morphine drip.

"Thanks," I said as I let her turn it up. I think this is where a bit of the wall around me began to crumble down because I just let her in.

~ FIN


End file.
